“‘God forgive me? Martin, you talk like an old woman. I tell you, since I was no higher than one of my jack-boots I’ve been listening to talk of hell and heaven--mostly hell, though--and I used to believe it one time. Nobody believed it any more than I did till when--till I began to see that the very people that was talking it so hard warn’t governed by what they said. What they wanted was everybody else to be governed by what they preached. I tell you I know. I’ve seen it in my own people-- I know them better than you do. It’s years now-- I was one of the fools, one that never let anybody, I thought, get the best of me at anything. You’re one--though you’re a good man in your fool way, Martin. I had no grudge against you, not even when I tried to lose you in the dory. But I had to get rid of your dory-mate.’ “‘Get rid of Dan? And why Dan?’ “‘Why? There again! You mean to tell me you don’t know?... I looked around before I went out this trip. Nobody’d tell me, but I knew his first name was Dan-- Dan something. One day, when the crew was out hauling the trawls, I rummaged his bunk and found part of a letter in my wife’s writing under his mattress. That was the same day I ran over Dan and you in the dory. ’Twas for that chance I’d been pretending my ankle warn’t better. Weak ankle, bah!’ He drove the bad foot against the stove and crushed in the oven door. ‘Anything weak about that foot!--bah! “Dear Dan,” the note read-- I know my wife’s handwriting, and his name’s Dan.’ “‘Wait a bit--wait a bit. How do you know it was this Dan? Are there no other Dans in Gloucester?’ “‘How do I know? And it in his bunk--under the mattress in his bunk.’